About the Cover Photographer: Greg Smith

It started back in kindergarten.

Greg Smith discovered show and tell. He learned everyone has a story. He learned shapes, forms, lines, light, shadow, color and movement are the building blocks of visual storytelling.

He fell in love with visually distinct places – his family’s suburban home in the Maryland woods, the beach, the mountains, their friends’ farm, streams, even concrete canyons.

He also saw how quickly moments pass and how visual elements define them.

Greg grew into an award-winning photographer and producer, a meticulous editor, and a widely published writer about topics ranging from water, the environment and breaking news to technology, copyright and photography business practices. He pursued a career as a photojournalist and editor in Oklahoma, Kansas and Telluride. He eventually settled in South Carolina. There, he and his writer/editor wife, Janet, reared three children on the banks – and in – the tidal May River, not far from Hilton Head Island.

For nearly two decades, he paddled that river and its marshes, photographing wildlife, changing tides and a developing shoreline. He helped launch several publications, and his pictures hung in local galleries, earning him top awards at the Honey Horn Art Market on Hilton Head Island, several one-man shows and inclusion in Charleston’s Southeast Wildlife Expo. In 2009, he released “Keeping the May River Wild.” It screened at five film festivals, earning a national Best of ASMP award and SC-ETV’s Southern Lens award.

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Aaron Abeyta – Poet, Author, Teacher, Coach, Mayor and San Luis Valley Native

Where were you born?

I was born in La Jara, Colorado (at the hospital there). Put another way, I am a San Luis Valley native from the jump.

At what point in your life did you decide to pursue poetry and writing?

Consciously, I made the call during my junior year of college. I was at Colorado State University to become an English teacher, and for whatever reason I just decided one day that I was going to drop the Education degree and pursue creative writing. It tacked on another year to the whole college experience as I made up a few classes, but it all worked out in the end; I ended up teaching and writing, best of both worlds.

Did you come from a creative family?

Depends on what you call creative. I am the only one that pursued “artistic” things, but if you count the creativity of living on a ranch, making things work as if by magic (i.e. duct tape, baling wire and twine), finding ways to make money stretch beyond its supposed limits, and the day to day life of living in a vibrant oral tradition, then by those standards we were all pretty creative. I really credit my grandpa for being one of my early influences; he told wonderful stories, and I strive, to this day, to create some of his storytelling “form” in all my work, whether it be poetry, letters or fiction.

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Q & A with Colorado-based author Craig Childs

Craig Childs is a writer who focuses on natural sciences, archaeology, and mind-blowing journeys into the wilderness. He has published more than a dozen critically acclaimed books on nature, science, and adventure. He is a commentator for National Public Radio’s Morning Edition, and his work has appeared in The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Men’s Journal, Outside and Orion. His subjects range from pre-Columbian archaeology to U.S. border issues to the last free-flowing rivers of Tibet.

We caught up with Craig last month while he was between adventures.

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Eleanor Harrington remembers Tincup … and a lot more

Article by Martha Quillen

Local Historian/Writer – October 1996 – Colorado Central Magazine

When you meet Eleanor Harrington, it’s hard to believe that she arrived in Central Colorado forty-five years ago with a husband and two sons.

Only Eleanor’s stories give a clue to her age. Tall and attractive, she looks like she could still easily walk a country mile and more — but she hates to have her picture taken.

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